Scientists find the biggest thing in the universe

A team of British astronomers claims to have found a structure in the universe that is 4 billion light years across. The point of this post is to try to comprehend how large that is.

The large quasar cluster is clearly seen as a long chain of peaks indicated by black circles. (The red crosses mark the positions of quasars in a different and smaller cluster). ( R. G. Clowes / UCLan)

What they’ve found is a cluster of large quasars, which are the nuclei of large galaxies that formed in the early universe. The fact that such a large clump of matter exists presents serious problems for theoretical physicists, who postulate that the universe should not be clumpy, but rather that matter should be spread out more evenly across the heavens.

But that’s theoretical physics, and I’m wanting to talk about how big big is.

First, let’s understand what a light year is. I know what you’re thinking, duh, Eric, it’s the distance light travels in a year. Yes, that’s true. But can you comprehend how far a light year is?

Quasar MC2 1635+119 and Host Galaxy. (NASA)

The closest star system to our Sun is Alpha Centauri, which is just over 4 light years from Earth. Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, has a good analogy to help understand this. If Earth were in Orlando, and Alpha Centauri were in Los Angeles, NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft, the most distant manmade objects, which are well beyond the orbit of Pluto, have traveled just one mile.

So a light year is really, really far. And this quasar cluster is 4 billion of them. Let’s take this one step further.

If one end of the quasar cluster is in Houston, and the other end is in Tokyo, NASA’s Voyager spacecraft would have traveled less than the diameter of a human hair between here and there.

Conversely, if you were to hop in the X-43, the world’s fastest airplane, which travels as Mach 9.6, it would take you approximately 40 trillion years to fly across this quasar cluster. Or approximately 10 years for every single fish in the world’s oceans.